The present invention relates generally to an entertainment management system for use in gaming environments such as casinos. The growth and competition in the casino gaming market in recent years and the increasingly sophisticated and complex technology being integrated into the gaming environment, at the individual game, casino management, and auditing levels, presents both challenges and opportunities to game manufacturers, gaming establishment operators, and regulatory agencies. The technological capabilities and requirements of, for example, advanced electronic games, multi-site gaming operations, detailed player tracking, wide area progressive jackpots, and various alternatives to the use of currency and coins by players, all present a potentially huge pool of ever-changing data which can be of great value to casino operators (from a management standpoint) and to regulators from an audit/compliance standpoint.
Given the value of such information to operators and regulators alike, there is an ever-increasing need for an expandable, flexible system which can efficiently, accurately, and in a real-time manner capture, access, accumulate, and process this potentially vast volume of audit, player, and other operations/management data being generated throughout the gaming environment. In turn, there is a corresponding need for a system which can efficiently, accurately and in a real-time manner share, communicate and distribute such information amongst other devices, networks, and systems within the gaming environment. Similarly, there is also the need for a system which can efficiently, accurately, and in a real-time manner analyze, manage, communicate, display, and otherwise report and allow ready access to such data for use by management and regulators.
Existing gaming management systems are, however, cumbersome in their implementations. They are often inefficient in, or incapable of, accumulating and/or processing the vast amount of data generated in a modern gaming environment. They are similarly often inefficient in, or incapable of, sharing, distributing, and communicating the data collected amongst other devices, networks, and systems within the gaming environment in a timely fashion, and, in particular, in a real-time manner. In addition, they are often inefficient, confusing, and burdensome insofar as providing for the display, presentation, or reporting of data to management or regulators, and, in particular, doing so in a real-time manner. Moreover, current systems often utilize hardware or software implementations which are limited in terms of expandability and capability as the needs and demands of the system grow. It is thus desirable to have a system which addresses the shortcomings of the current systems, and which provides additional features not available in existing systems.